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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 31st August 2025 - awful.systems (awful.systems)
submitted 3 months ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I apologize to bring you the latest example of the intersection of US fascism with silicon valley tech industry.

This time the Whitehouse have decided that UI design is kinda important (gee I wonder if there used to be a department or two for that): https://americabydesign.gov/

Well nothing wrong with a little updating of UI anywa--

What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong. But what's the foundation of that brand? One that's more globally recognized than practically anything else. It's the nation…where he was born. It's the United States of America.

To update today's government to be an Apple Store like experience: beautifully designed, great user experience, run on modern software.

Oh god kill it with fire.

The web design of their website is also worth remarking on here:

  1. The title text that reads "AMERICA by DESIGN" is an SVG. The alt text is "America First Legal logo"
  2. The page contents are obnoxiously large and obnoxiously gray before they fade in.
  3. ~~For some reason~~ Every single word gets it's own element to make the obnoxious fade in possible. Because I guess that's what happen when you fire all the people who actually know what they're doing.
  4. They managed to include a US flag icon with only 39 stars which is too few stars to be official and too many stars to be visible at teeny sizes
  5. The favicon is just 16x16 pixels of the word "by" in cursive that's so blurry you can't actually tell that's what it is.
  6. If your browser width is between 768px and ~808px there is overlapping text at the top.

The tech bros tied to this? Joe Gebbia co-founder of AirBNB, along with Big-Balls. Maybe others but those are the two who were retweeted by the twitter account.

Edit: also this part:

©2025 National Design Studio

Someone ought to remind them of US copyright law because official federal work is in the public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 10 points 3 months ago

The Trump administration could've gotten some rando on neocities or nekoweb to do their website and unironically gotten a better result than this bland garbage.

The favicon is just 16x16 pixels of the word “by” in cursive that’s so blurry you can’t actually tell that’s what it is.

They might as well have gone with the Schutzstaffel lightning bolts - they're pretty recognisable even if the resolution is Jack x Shit, and they fit Trump's general ideology pretty well.

[-] JFranek@awful.systems 7 points 2 months ago

I have no idea what is good web design. I'll just note makes the waving red, white and blue flag in the background makes the white heading text pretty hard to read.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 2 months ago

Seems you do have some idea.

[-] JFranek@awful.systems 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yay! *pats myself on the back*

[-] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 6 points 2 months ago

Is this National Design Studio actually part of the federal government, though? Or is this a further collapsing of the distinction between state and enterprise? Because honestly I could totally buy members of this administration looking for ways to use copyright law to go after people who make parodies or otherwise use US iconography without toeing the party line. I'm doing my damnedest not to go full tinfoil hat with this shit, but it's proving so hard.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 3 months ago

Finally a page Trump can read. (that font size damn...)

[-] istewart@awful.systems 8 points 2 months ago

Unironically, this was surely the primary design brief.

this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
22 points (100.0% liked)

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